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About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. I study the History of Biblical Interpretation, which includes Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. My interests are religion, politics, TV, movies, and reading.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Accountability, Seeing Miracles, and the Israelites in the Wilderness

As I've done my daily quiet time in the Book of Deuteronomy, I've
thought about a view that one of my relatives has. According to my
relative, people in this day and age can be saved, but they cannot be
lost. Why? Because there is not enough unassailable evidence that
Christianity is the one true religion for God to judge people according
to their response to it. In the Bible, particularly the New
Testament, my relative notes, miracles accompany the proclamation of the
Gospel in order to attest to the Gospel's truth (see John 15:24;
Hebrews 2:4). When miracles do not accompany the preaching of the
Gospel, however, how can God judge people for rejecting it? On what
basis should people believe in the Gospel as opposed to other religions
and philosophies, if God does not prove to them beyond a reasonable
doubt that the Gospel is true?

A number of my evangelical
friends say that the people who reject the Gospel would probably reject
it even if they saw a miracle (see Luke 16:31), but I have issues with
that claim. So people should be judged according to a
hypothetical----according to what they would have done? That makes no sense to me.
So
what's this have to do with Deuteronomy? I read Deuteronomy 1, and it
talks about how the Israelites were barred from the Promised Land
because of their unbelief. They were intimidated by the walls of Canaan
and the size of the Amorites, and thus they did not want to attempt to
conquer Canaan. I wondered if God likewise judges me when I am
afraid, but then I saw that the Israelites in Deuteronomy 1 had
advantages that I myself do not have. As Deuteronomy 1:30-33 indicates,
the Israelites had seen and experienced God's power: God's deliverance
of Israel from Egypt, God taking care of the Israelites in the
wilderness, and God guiding the Israelites by cloud and by fire. I
haven't seen miracles at that level, so, while I can understand God
judging the Israelites of that time for being afraid, I have a hard time
believing that God judges me for my fear.

Some may argue that God does
judge people in the here and now, as God judged the Israelites in the
wilderness, for the wilderness generation are paraded before New
Testament Christians as an example. After all, does not the
Epistle to the Hebrews warn its Christian audience not to be
unbelieving, as were the Israelites in the wilderness, lest they fail to
enter God's rest? And does not Paul in I Corinthians 10 exhort the
Corinthians not to be like the sexually-immoral Israelites in the
wilderness? Does not that imply that the lessons of Deuteronomy 1 are
for all time, and apply even to those who have not seen God's miracles?

But it can be argued that the Hebrews and the Corinthians, too, saw and experienced miracles.
Hebrews 6:10 refers to people who have tasted the powers of the World
to Come. And I Corinthians 12:28 mentions miracles and the gift of
healing.

So is the Bible irrelevant, if people are not held
accountable over whether or not they believe in it? I don't think so.
It has good principles. I think of the hyper-dispensationalist saying
that I've heard that parts of the Bible are for us, but they were not written to us. For
example, I know of hyper-dispensationalists who do not believe that
(say) all of the Gospel of Matthew is normative for Christians today,
for they maintain that the Gospel of Matthew teaches a works-salvation,
whereas Christians are saved by grace through faith. But they still
study the Gospel of Matthew because they believe that it has edifying
stuff, even for them. Similarly, while I am not in the same
position as the Israelites in the wilderness or even the early church, I
can still be edified by lessons pertaining to them: how we can trust
God because he loves us and wants to take care of us, for example.

I should say this about accountability: I do not want to imply that human beings in the here-and-now are not accountable to God for what they do.
The issue that I'm addressing is salvation: when does God hold people
accountable for how they respond to the Gospel? How much knowledge do
they need before they indeed are held accountable? Of course,
one can point out that morality and salvation are intertwined issues,
for salvation is God saving us from the punishment that we deserve for
our immorality. So things are thornier than I may think.

1 comment:

Another complication is that whatever 'externally' people may have experience of, there is also the working of the Holy Spirit that maybe needs taking into account. So, the Holy Spirit may perhaps be resisted in attempts to 'enlighten' people, even where the presentation of the gospel isn't an issue, or maybe even where occasions of sin aren't.